Edward Snowden offers to help Brazil over U.S. spying in return for asylum

An image grab taken from a video released by Wikileaks on Oct. 12, 2013 shows US intelligence leaker Edward Snowden speaking during a dinner with US ex-intelligence workers and activists in Moscow on Oct. 9, 2013. [AFP]

“I’ve expressed my willingness to assist where it’s appropriate and legal, but, unfortunately, the US government has been working hard to limit my ability to do so,” Snowden said in the letter.

“Until a country grants me permanent political asylum, the US government will continue to interfere with my ability to speak out,” he said.

Snowden – currently living in Russia, where he has been granted a year’s asylum until next summer – said he had been impressed by the Brazilian government’s strong criticism of the NSA spy programme targeting internet and telecommunications worldwide, including monitoring the mobile phone of the Brazilian president, Dilma Rousseff.

Rousseff has been one of the most vocal critics of the spying revealed by Snowden. In September she launched a blistering attack on US espionage at the UN general assembly, with Barack Obama waiting in the wings to speak to next.

The following month, she cancelled a visit to Washington that was to include a state dinner, and she has joined Germany in pushing for the UN to adopt a symbolic resolution that seeks to extend personal privacy rights to all people.

Rousseff has also ordered her government to take measures including laying fibre-optic lines directly to Europe and South American nations in an effort to “divorce” Brazil from the US-centric backbone of the internet that experts say has facilitated NSA spying.

Brazilian senators have asked for Snowden’s help during hearings about the NSA programme’s aggressive targeting of Brazil, an important transit hub for transatlantic fibre-optic cables.

In his letter, Snowden used Brazilian examples to explain the extent of the US surveillance he had revealed. “Today, if you carry a cellphone in São Paulo, the NSA can track where you are, and it does – it does so 5bn times a day worldwide.

“When a person in Florianópolis visits a website, the NSA keeps track of when it happened and what they did on that site. If a mother in Porto Alegre calls her son to wish him luck with his exam, the NSA can save the data for five years or longer. The agency can keep records of who has an affair or visits porn sites, in case it needs to damage the reputations of its targets.”

He added: “Six months ago, I revealed that the NSA wanted to listen to the whole world. Now the whole world is listening, and also talking back. And the NSA does not like what it is hearing.”

Snowden’s offer comes a day after the White House dashed hopes that the US might be considering an amnesty for the whistleblower, insisting he should still return to the US to stand trial.

Asked about weekend comments by senior NSA official Richard Ledgett suggesting that an amnesty was “worth talking about” if Snowden returned the missing NSA documents, White House spokesman Jay Carney said: “Our position has not changed on that matter – at all. He [Ledgett] was expressing his personal opinion; these decisions are made by the Department of Justice.”